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You can do fairly decent illustrations with Visio, but it requires advanced usage, and you're right, for most people it would be considered painful. You will see a lot of pretty looking stuff on my site (www.visguy.com)
but I use advanced and developer techniques to create a lot of the stuff.

Some people's workflows use Illustrator or Freehand to create artwork, then they import to Visio via SVG. Then they can add special Visio behaviors like data fields, or text-repositioning control handles.

"Two-and-a-half-cents" is just a modification of "That's my two cents worth", which means; "That's my basic opinion, for what it's worth."

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While I haven't used Illustrator or Freehand for a few versions, they are generally intended for graphic artists who are adept at creating illustrations from the ground up, drawing every single element they need and using artist's techniques to get the job
done. These apps also do fancy color-separation stuff when it is time to print, are very good with PostScript, etc.

Visio's basic philosophy is that offices users don't want to draw, but instead should assemble diagrams from existing symbols. Visio has connectors which stay glued to shapes when they are moved. This is great for flowcharts, org charts, network diagrams,
etc. I don't know if the illustration packages have the notion of glued connectors these days.

Visio behaves very much like other MS Office apps, so the standardization is also a plus. It has a huge installed base, so you are working with the "standard" and have the best chance of being able to share diagrams with other users.

You can do scaled drawings in a scaled environment (ie: space plans, office plans, elevation diagrams of network rack systems, etc.) By setting, say 1" = 1' - 0", you can draw in real-world units, and don't need to convert to fit objects on a page. I don't
know if Illustrator or Freehand have any kind of page scale settings.

A lot of competing products and open source products mimic many of Visio's features. Most seem to have gotten connectors to stick to shapes in connected diagrams, and many have drag-and-drop from palettes of shapes. Where they miss out is in ShapeSheet smarts
and automation features.

Visio is very automatable, so you can generate drawings automatically from data, or you can read data from an existing drawing. This lets Visio evolve within an organization. For example: Folks start by creating useful drawings. Then they program a little
bit to extract rudimentary data from a drawing. Then they develop a bit more and create a full-blown, visual product configuration system.

SmartShapes allow you to build intelligent graphical behaviors into a shape, which can save you editing. The classic example is a thick, double-line arrow. When you stretch it, the arrow head doesn't stretch, but the body does. MS art/symbols have this behavior
now, but for a long time, this was unique to Visio. You can learn more about SmartShapes in these articles:

I think on-line, web-based competition looks interesting, because these programs can be rapidly updated and evolve quickly. Plus the diagrams are stored on the server, so the software producer can scan every drawing and see what people are doing (or doing
incorrectly) and incorporate the feedback. But I can't name any specific one as the clear leader.

That's my two-and-a-half cents. I hope others can chime in with information about the illustration and open source products, as I haven't been toying around with alternatives as much as I should.

"Visio's basic philosophy is that offices users don't want to draw, but instead should assemble diagrams from existing symbols."

I sometimes need to communicate math/physics ideas with other people. I have tried to draw illustrative figures using Visio, such as drawing an nucleus with electron cloud, but it turns out painful. So from the designing philosophy you mentioned, Visio is
not ideally suited for these purposes?

Additionally, for university professors/lecturers who need frequently to prepare slides in teaching, do you know what software they use?

You can do fairly decent illustrations with Visio, but it requires advanced usage, and you're right, for most people it would be considered painful. You will see a lot of pretty looking stuff on my site (www.visguy.com)
but I use advanced and developer techniques to create a lot of the stuff.

Some people's workflows use Illustrator or Freehand to create artwork, then they import to Visio via SVG. Then they can add special Visio behaviors like data fields, or text-repositioning control handles.

"Two-and-a-half-cents" is just a modification of "That's my two cents worth", which means; "That's my basic opinion, for what it's worth."

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